Hi Willl,
thank you for sharing this with me, im posting it here for all our friends to see...
The Old Fisherman
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Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at
the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a
knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why,
he's hardly taller than my eight year old," I thought as I stared at
the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face -
lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he
said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one
night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and
there's no bus 'til morning." He told me he'd been hunting for a room
since noon but with no success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess
it's my face...I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few
more treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could
sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the
morning." I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch.
I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked
the old man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he
held up a brown paper bag.
When I finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him
a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old man had
an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished
for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her
husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury. He didn't tell
it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with
a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He
thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going. At bedtime, we
put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in the
morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out
on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his
bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said "Could I please
come back and stay next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a
bit, I can sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added,
"Your children made me feel at home. Grown-ups are bothered by my face,
but children don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come
again.
On his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As
a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had
ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so
that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 am and I
wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for us. In the
years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time that he
did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other
times we received packages in the mail, always by special delivery;
fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every
leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail
these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly
precious. When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of
a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning.
"Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You
can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could
have know him, perhaps their illness' would have been easier to bear. I
know our family will always be grateful to have know him; from him we
learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good
with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed
me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden
chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my surprise, it was growing
in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my
plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained,
"and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't
mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till
I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was
imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful
one," God might have said when he came to the soul of the seet old
fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small body." All this
happened long ago and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul
must stand.
The Lord does not look at the things man looks at.
Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
-- Author Unknown
Blessings always
Pauline R